1. Technology Field
The present invention generally relates to a method of programming memory cells and a method of reading data using flags to increase execution speed, and a memory storage apparatus and a memory controller using the methods.
2. Description of Related Art
The rapid growth in the popularity of digital cameras, cellular phones, and MP3 players in recent years has brought about the escalated demand for storage media by consumers. Since a rewritable non-volatile memory (e.g., a flash memory) has several characteristics, such as non-volatility of data, low power consumption, small size and non-mechanical structure, the rewritable non-volatile memory is the most suitable memory to be adopted in a portable multimedia apparatus mentioned above.
Generally speaking, the rewritable non-volatile memory includes a number of physical blocks, and each of the physical blocks has a number of physical pages. Besides, when writing data to the rewritable non-volatile memory, a physical page is the smallest unit for writing. Thus, when the size of data to be written is smaller than a capacity of the physical page, by the writing method in the related art, predetermined values are programmed with the data to fill up the physical page. When reading data from the rewritable non-volatile memory, these predetermined values are also read. However, under the above-mentioned situation, a controller for controlling the rewritable non-volatile memory has to encode these predetermined values and program these predetermined values to the physical page. Nevertheless, a host system logically identifies logical addresses corresponding to these predetermined values as unused or identifies data stored in these logical addresses as deleted. Thus, programming these predetermined values to the rewritable non-volatile memory is meaningless and gives rise to extra system burden.
Accordingly, how to access data in the size smaller than the storage capacity of one physical page in the rewritable non-volatile memory is an important concern to persons skilled in this field.
Nothing herein should be construed as an admission of knowledge in the prior art of any portion of the present invention. Furthermore, citation or identification of any document in this application is not an admission that such document is available as prior art to the present invention, or that any reference forms a part of the common general knowledge in the art.